The West Wind Descends

Introduction

Copied by Yang Yinliu in 1922 from a manuscript shown him by the Daoist Kan Xianzhi; Wuxi shifan gong-and-drum music

The West Wind Descends is a piece of shifan gong-and-drum music handed down in the Daoist music of Wuxi, Jiangsu. Wuxi Daoist music has three branches, sung chant, fanyin and gong-and-drum music, and the last, also called shifan luogu, is instrumental like fanyin and counts as a genre of its own. In the summer of 1922 the Daoist Kan Xianzhi showed the twenty-three-year-old Yang Yinliu gongche manuscripts of seven pieces, this one among them, and Yang copied them out by hand and kept them. In August and September 1951 Yang and Cao Anhe went back to Wuxi to record the music and wrote it down again in cipher notation, and their edition of shifan luogu was published in 1980. The heritage entry for Wuxi Daoist music names this piece together with The Moon Reflected in Erquan and Eighteen Beats as works born in the region. Wuxi Daoist music entered the second national list of intangible heritage in 2008.